Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday July 21, 2008 @02:05PM
from the when-i-was-a-kid-there-were-only-2-kinds-of-bricks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a fascinating report and video tour inside the Lego factory, which is full of robots and controlled by a mainframe. 'This video shows something that very few people have had the opportunity to witness: the inside of the Lego factory, with no barriers or secrets. I filmed every step in the creation of the brick. From the raw granulate stored in massive silos to the molding machines to the gigantic storage cathedrals to the decoration and packaging warehouses, you will be able to see absolutely everything, including the most guarded secret of the company: the brick molds themselves.'"

I hit my LEGO peak about 15 years ago, when Castles (Knights, Woodsmen, Dragons) were the rave. I recall getting a full castle set and integrating the pieces into larger, more substantial castles. The pieces were very specialized (i.e. parapet pieces, pre-built castle walls) but what this did is allowed me to construct more elaborate add-ons since I didnt have to exhaust my regular pieces on building spires, walls, etc.. So yes, I would say even 15 years ago the sets were certainly specialized, but you could really use it to your advantage. My nephews and nieces now play with my old stuff and I find their newest sets are even MORE specialized, but yet again, they use it in a similar manner when I was a kid. Speaking of which, I have a 1 month old so I have to make plans on getting my lego back for my little one!

They still have the mixed bag packs, technics sets, etc. - it's just that most toy stores don't carry them. There's more money to be made in selling the smaller (less shelf real estate) movie-licensed themed sets (presumably better selling for younger children, the target market).

Amazon.com has a fabulous selection, and I'm sure with a little searching you could find an online retailer which had an even better selection with the same quality (or better) customer reviews.

I bought a Technics front-loader from them last Christmas when I needed some cheering up and was pleased that the quality was as high as ever, the instructions were just as graphic and cleanly presented, and the process was just as mystifying until it all came together.

It filled me with that same glee of discovery and revelation that I'm sure anybody who remembers Lego from their childhood knows.

You're wrong. It's simply the possibilities that have increased. If you want the simplicity of fewer kinds of part, just get simple sets - Creator, etc. Otherwise, at the very least, pretty much all parts are reusable in custom builds of a similar theme to the original set (vehicle, building, robot/mecha/spaceship). You can be inventive in your use of the detailed parts, or you can look at the original sets for hints as to how to incorporate them into your builds.

A number of years ago, this "juniorization" process was becoming apparent as Lego attempted to make its toys accessible to younger ages while reducing the cost of nice-looking models. At the time, the company was in financial trouble and this misguided strategy ended up only making things worse.

Things seem to have reversed since then, however. Sure, there are still *some* rather specific pieces (like boat hulls) that it would be costly or difficult for Lego to sell brick-wise, but most new pieces that get i

People were complaining about specialty pieces when they started making spaceship canopies and castle wall pieces.
I picked up a couple of the big Bionicle robot sets a couple years ago, and they do have a lot of new pieces. All of them are compatible with older bricks, but they wouldn't be terribly useful unless you're building a Bionicle style robot. The main difference is the sets are based more on axles, hinges, and ball joints than bricks.

But this still doesn't answer the "Why is Lego so expensive?" question that I've always had ever since I was a kid. The materials can't cost that much (Obviously petroleum byproducts cost more now than they did 15 years ago, but still...). Also, those looked like injection molds - which AFAIK are one of the cheapest ways to manufacture something. Don't get me wrong - I love, love, love lego. I was just always sad as a kid that I didn't have money to buy more.

I am not in the toy making business, but I find their production process pretty high tech. And they probably have a very high production quality control. They probably invest a lot to keep their product as perfect as possible. Do they have production facilities in low-wage countries?

Anyway, thanks to Gizmodo for making this amazing piece of fabrication history visible for us!!

It's high tech not to have high quality, but to have less operators. You can either have low automatization in factories in low wage countries or high automatization in high wage countries, but the quality is the same (is plastic, god damn it. The product is only as good as the plastic it's made of).

That's not really true. Process engineers have a lot to do with the quality of plastic products. Those big injection molding machines are really finicky about temperature and pressure, and the molds have to be designed very well. Otherwise you'd get legos that shrink too much, or not enough, or worst of all - not consistently.

Legos have to strike a delicate balance between fitting too tightly and too loosely... it's actually amazing that all of the sets over the years are pretty darn compatible. It's the rare Lego that simply falls off.

Plastic quality is also important, but presumably they are just buying some standard high-quality type. (Maybe not?)

it's actually amazing that all of the sets over the years are pretty darn compatible. It's the rare Lego that simply falls off.

Very good point, I have some nearly 20 year old legos that fit with brand new ones like they were from the same batch. I suppose I took it for granted without really thinking how much work would go into this level of quality control.

If you buy the cheaper competition, you'll quickly see how much Lego's focus on Quality Assurance matters. It's not unusual for the cheaper knock-offs to have a few bricks in each set that simply don't connect at all to the others.

And those are all from the same batch - I doubt that year-to-year, or decade-to-decade, compatibility is even on the roadmap for those products.

It's true... I was scanning for a post that mentioned this so I wouldn't repeat; the quality of Lego is REALLY fantastic.

Still, it's just injection molded plastic... if you look at average per-piece prices, it comes in at around 9 cents per piece... smaller sets are higher, larger sets are somewhat cheaper per piece. To me, that's outrageous for a mass produced piece of injection molded plastic.

Don't get me wrong... I'm still a sucker... I buy a lot of Lego for both me the boy; I've even bulk purchased on

bzzzzt wrong. They're expensive because people will pay for them. Plastic injected parts are super cheap. Take a look at http://www.caplugs.com/ those are made in the USA and are super cheap. When you are doing high volume injection molded parts it makes little difference if they are made in the US, Denmark, China or anywhere else. It's all what the market will bear.

so what's your point? Factories move to china for low wages,but obviously here that's not a problem because the process is completely automatic. You only need a couple of operators to change the molds and some QC, that's about it.

Doing this in China could cost just a little less than doing it in Denmark, proving that legos are expensive "just because", and not because the manufacturing process is necessarily complex to require human intervention in every stage (like, say, clothes, that need to be sewn manually).

Legos do have much higher quality than similar "block" toys. They have higher durability and don't wear out as fast, and have more stringent quality control. They may cost more than a competitor like Mega Bloks, but they'll last longer.

I realize I came across flamey - what I meant to say was that there is better value for money out there. Not necessarily in the direct competition area (as with Mega Blocks) but with other types of toys.

What gives better value for your money than Lego?I have yet to see a toy that will get as much play as a tub of LegosNow I do think they have way to many special parts these days but that is just because I am old.

perhaps, maybe Lincoln logs, tinker toys. maybe knex, there was another toy that used nuts and bolts i cant' recall the name of... they might not make it any more, teaching kids how to build with wrenches and screwdrivers isn't as popular as it once was..

oh hey and Lincoln logs and tinker toys are made of renewable, biodegradable wood technology, it would be nice to know if anyone used cornstarch to build plastic like biodegradable interconnecting blocks.

Oh they are all good toys. Lincoln Logs are not as flexible as Legos and knex is just a bit to fiddly for young kids.They are all great toys with what I consider good choices.You are thinking of Erector Sets or I think they where also called Mecco.

true, for the very young, you might want to stick with non interconnecting alphabet/number covered blocks, and teach the child their numbers and letters by Playing With the child... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000067NXE [amazon.com]

ah well. there are a ton of toys for kids, and edubuntu has a nice collection of FOSS tools for kids old enough to use a mouse on up!.

maybe kids blocks shouldn't be made with cornstarch, since then they might degrade too quickly. there is an advantage in that though, since you can price the blocks closer to margins, knowing they've got a limited shelf life in humid/hot environments...

Ugh. Only in Capitalist America would planned obsolescence be considered an advantage.

The only problem is that most countries lack a proper public plan to recycle plastics (mostly only a couple of type of plastics used in some bottle, like PET and PEHD - but not ABS which is what legos are made from)

At risk of going off at a tangent, this is a bugbear of mine. I live in the UK, where the general public is under increasing pressure to recycle, while producers are under very little obligation to make that at all easy, say, by reducing packaging, using more easily recyclable materials, or collecting recyclable materials themselves. Similarly, councils are pushing for powers to punish people for not recycling enough while not providing the necessary facilities.

Most packaging in this country these days has little numbers to say what type of material it is, in a little recycle-y triangle logo. So, for plastics, PE is number 1, HDPE is 2, PP is 5, PS is 6, and so on. So far, so good. It goes awry when you find that a lot of the plastics can't be recycled - PE and HDPE are easy, but I'm thinking particular of PP, which is used for loads of food packaging, bottles, etc. but apparently can't be recycled anywhere.

The labels always have a little bit of text next to the recycle-y number/logo which says "Recycle where facilities available", and I'm like "Where the fuck is that then? Germany?". "Recycle where facilities available", like it's my job to hunt out some mystical place where I can recycle this stuff. Fucking idiots. Where facilities available my arse, build some fucking facilities and I'll recycle your plastic bottles.

Capsela and construx used to be like lego but better. I went into a toys r us recently looking for these as a present for my uncle and it seems they have been replaced by things that require no creativity or thought. It seems Capsela has been bought out and is now has quality control issues while Construx isn't made anymore.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx [wikipedia.org]

Yes, when Apple purchases Seagate HDDs, and Intel processors, and ATI video cards, they ensure that they are of a far higher quality than the Seagate HDDs, Intel processors and ATI video cards that Dell purchases.

I have - they're called Duplo, identical except they're twice as big (linearly). But seriously, Airfix, better known for plastic model kids produced something like "Bucket-O-Brix" that were advertised as being compatible with *cough* the leading manufacturer, or words to that effect. I'm pretty sure there were others.

They say that the entire plant (and robots) are controlled by computers, but that's actually a lie. Each one of those robots has a midget inside of it, controlling the vehicle. Its very expensive to hire and feed those midgets and also to supply a steady stream of hookers to keep them from uprising. Hookers aren't cheap and that's why lego cost so much.

There is only one supplier, a significant demand, and they charge whatever the market is willing to pay.
Don't like it, don't buy them. If enough people stop buying them, the prices may drop or the company may start producing less and cutting back costs and charge the same. Or charge more to make up for the revenue loss if the ones left will pay the higher prices.
And so it goes....

They charge what people are willing to pay. Period. Of course they cost way less to manufacture, but how many companies do you honestly think will lower their prices 'just to be nice'? Please, Lego are popular and fly off the shelves even at their inflated price. More power to 'em. That's how the market economy works.

So the real question is, why don't other toy companies make the lego copies, but cheaper? There would still be a profit margin for them. Any patents lego had on the original blocks must have run out by now.

The big deal (according to someone at the company in an NPR interview, I believe) is repeat customers. Since their product is so durable, customers tend to buy until they have enough then use them for a couple generations (I know my legos will be used by my kids someday). When a product is so durable, you need to charge a little more for it in order to ensure your company's survival.

Indeed. There are Lego bricks in my kids' collection that are 40 years old from when I was but a tyke. The bricks that old seem to be a little more brittle than they are now, but otherwise are perfectly durable and compatible with the current Lego. It's cool to occasionally see the old logo on the studs.

Lego is very expensive, but it's worth it. They've been through many changes, including some that I thought moved away from the core of what Lego is all about, but they still make a great product, and I still buy plenty for my kids.

What they charge is determined by the market, not by the cost of the product, exchange rates, or any other mechanism. They will charge whatever they can get from you while still producing Legos at their plant's most efficient rate.

Seriously, though, you make a good point. If they wanted to be evil, I guess they could make them less durable, but I think in the end it's better that everyone knows them as the best.

There is also one thing to bear in mind - as soon as a company like Lego races for the bottom (in terms of price/quality), they're going to lose the customers who valued the quality and then be beaten to the customers who don't by other organisations who 10 or 20 years ago perfected the art of "juuuuusst enough quality that it won't fall apart within 15 minutes of the box opening. Probably."

you love love love lego because it is different from duplo. It's got lots of cool themes that capture imagination and the product is so high quality that it's damn near impossible to separate some of the pieces when they're snapped together..I think the creative marketing and design justifies an elevated price, even if the physical product alone had not.

It must also help to have the dealership channels that Lego have.

Snap it all together and there are lots of reasons why Lego can get more for their product

I also find it surprising that advanced manufacturing technology hasn't driven down the price of Legos. However, this article [fastcompany.com] gives some insight into the business side of Lego and shows that the prices aren't simply inflated out of greed.

They are very particular about the ABS they use - it has to be metals-free, historically not very easy - which used to be supplied only by Bayer (until around 1998, LEGO US was still shipping ABS pellets from Germany to Enfield CT - one worth-his-weight-in-bricks engineer got GE Pittsfield MA to spec the plastic, saving them some bucks).

The bricks IIRC are build to a tolerance of 3/1000ths of an inch. Look at bricks and try and find the gates (where the plastic in injected and detaches from the flashing) or the knock-outs (where a part of the molding machine pushed the brick out - typically these are obvious kludgy bits of a plastic toy, in LEGOs they are all but invisible) The LEGO engineers used to smile a lot as other companies' engineers searched, often in vain, for these tell-tale machine marks.

In Enfield they have a lego-brick knight statue commemorating their ISO 9001 certification. Not so sure how many toy factories hit that mark.

For a long time the place was rather labor-intensive. A 1990 tour had more people on the packing line and a series of lights to alert someone on the floor (who had to be in sight of the molding machines) to a malfunction. The same tour in 1996 this was replaced by a pager system. In all that automation, they prided themselves on never letting someone go from the factory when their role was replaced by a machine -they always had something new to be done based on a lot of R&D. Haven't been there since 2000, but I understand that pattern was pretty much unbroken.

At least in Enfield, the factory was nearly as as spotless as the HQ office buildings. I doubt every plastic-toy-cranking factory elsewhere in the world has that level of upkeep, and it's not cheap.

Making the rafts of tie-in toys means paying royalties to Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. While base sets might cheaper at WalMart now than they were at a boutique toy shops a few years back, the brand name additions likely helped keep prices off the bottom.

Enfield CT likely isn't the cheapest labor market around, which explains why, sadly, a year ago the last nut and bolt of the factory were shipped off to Mexico. Blasted sad. A great bunch of people up there.

1. They're expensive because they are built to a much higher level of quality than is typical for injection-molded plastic toys.

Have you ever seen a defective Lego brick? Or heard of a set with a missing piece? A lot of work (and expense) goes into avoiding that. Hence all the automation - if they had humans doing all that work, Lego would be even more expensive.

The bricks themselves are little marvels of engineering - they use extremely heavy, multi-piece molds, and sophisticated molding machines to keep the dimensional tolerances to within (IIRC).001 mm.

2. They're expensive because they're very durable.

Despite the relative cheapness of the plastic material itself, you can easily find Lego that's 30 years old, has been played with by dozens (or hundreds) of kids, snapped together and apart thousands of times, and still functions perfectly.

Given that they basically don't wear out, Lego bricks are priced higher than they would be if they were intended to be replaced from year to year.

3. They're expensive because people are willing to pay for them.

As a result of #1 and #2 above, Lego has a well-deserved reputation for quality. Despite plenty of lower-priced competition, Lego continues to sell well.

You can even buy bricks that are inter-operable with Lego for literally 1/10th the price, and they still don't out-sell the real thing. Why? Because they're simply not made as well - they don't stick together or come apart as well as Lego bricks, and they aren't nearly as sturdy.

Even as an 8-year-old, I noticed that the knock-off blocks were not worth building anything out of, and quickly separated them from my "real" Legos.

I found a reference at Lego.uk (I've since lost it) that claims that the dies are precise to 0.005 mm. It's reasonable to assume that plastic shrinkage at least doubles that. Still, it's *way* more precise than anything else in the toy aisle.

Ahh, true that. I've never had a piece that didn't fit! Or a piece missing from a set either for that matter... I can't say the same for some furniture I've bought (and that cost a whole lot more than a lego set).

I've had a set missing a piece. Heck, the last set I purchased for my kid didn't match what was on the cover. When we opened the box up our Lego Star Wars set actually contained Indiana Jones pieces. Even worse, the retards at Target almost didn't take the set back. It's no wonder that people shop at Wal-Mart.

I buy Lego sets because that's what my son wants, and my son wants Lego because Lego is way better at marketing than the competition.

As an example. My kids liked Star Wars, but they didn't become obsessive over Star Wars until they played the Lego Star Wars video games. Next thing I know even my girls want Legos, and my boy has gone completely crazy.

I don't mind. I happen to like both Star Wars and Lego. I just bough my kids the Lego Indiana Jones video game and I hope it has the same effect. I'm going to spend quality time with my kinds anyhow, but I would much rather play Indiana Jones or Star Wars than American Girl Doll or Power Rangers.

I've had a set missing a piece. Heck, the last set I purchased for my kid didn't match what was on the cover. When we opened the box up our Lego Star Wars set actually contained Indiana Jones pieces. Even worse, the retards at Target almost didn't take the set back. It's no wonder that people shop at Wal-Mart.

Chances are, it was switched by a customer or something else to that effect.

I've had a set missing a piece. Heck, the last set I purchased for my kid didn't match what was on the cover. When we opened the box up our Lego Star Wars set actually contained Indiana Jones pieces. Even worse, the retards at Target almost didn't take the set back. It's no wonder that people shop at Wal-Mart.

That's nothing. I opened up the case of my new improvised nuclear weapon and all I found was a bunch of pinball machine parts!

I once hit a malformed (smashed?) 1x4 gray plate in the Adventurers zeppelin set. This was the only occurence though. This was probably because the smashed plate weighed exactly the same as a normal plate (their main QC devices are precision scales).

I know because it is Lego it is a big deal, but on How it's Made, airing on Discovery Channel they have shown many injection molding processes including either Duplo or some other knock off Lego manufacturer. It is interesting (short), but not that "top secret"; nor super informative.

I don't know if you meant to make this mistake, but Duplo is a lego brand. It's their line of bricks for younger children. Really a gateway brick toy to some of their other products, such as the Town line of kits, or the most addicting of all, Lego Mindstorms.

How it's made was one of the knock-offs, however, Discovery Channel did show the actual Lego factory in a segment of the show "How do they do that". It was mystifying to see that they are still hand-carving their new pieces, as opposed to CAD/CNC prototyping.

Legos have always been expensive, but a lot of people don't realize that there are plenty of used legos for sale. Ebay and yard sales are often full of them. A great deal of the time, the instructions are included or are available elsewhere.

I also remember reading a story once about a guy who makes giant works of art, using Legos like pixels. I believe they said that if you want to buy like 10,000 blue bricks, you can get bulk prices straight from Lego.

Interestingly, sets on ebay often go for an appreciable fraction of the price they originally sold for, or more than the original price for some of the really good ones. I can't think of many other toys that hold value or even appreciate in that way, insane Star Wars memorabilia, etc. notwithstanding.

C'mon - seriously? Why does Starbucks coffee or Coke cost the consumer 25x the cost of the ingredients? Why do baseball cards cost 50x the cost of the paper and print?

It's all BRAND. You're not paying for the plastic - you're paying for the TV commericals, the packaging, the crappy Star Wars licensing fees and even the salary of the PR flunky who gets this crap posted on SlashDot.

Almost 2 decades ago I worked in the color lab of one of the suppliers of the plastic granules that LEGO uses, and I can tell you that even then, LEGO had about the most tight color and quality control in place I've ever come across. That's probably why a new brick and a brick bought a decade ago are still so much alike.

I remember that most of that production was checked in double tact: twice as often during a run then any other plastic, and that included metamere checking (ensuring that the color also changes correctly when you switch from daylight to artificial light - not always a given as every pigment you use can act differently).

I've not been involved in developing the LEGO color recipes, but hats off to whoever did them from their samples - that must have taken at least a week. New stuff like matching the color of the leather going to be used in car seats was easier IMHO (although also challenging, precisely because of the metamere issues). But it was fun, albeit occasionally dangerous work, in those days some of the additives were highly toxic..

The thing with Lego is that if the molds aren't just right then the blocks either fall apart or jam together. Getting that right is a big factor of the success of Lego - it just feels so good when it all clicks together.

HowStuffWorks says the mold tolerance is 0.002mm. That's 500 to the milimetre.

Really... plastics shrink as they're cooled from the mold, and how much shrinkage you get also depends on how much plastic is there. Now notice that all your long Lego trusses are exactly dead straight. Even the ones that are 20, 30, or 40 years old. And the 40 year old pieces interlock perfectly with the brand new ones. That says a lot for the plastics composition too. Go check out the dash on a 40 year old Dodge and see how much it's changed dimensionally. It's all in the details.